Everyone needs a haircut. That's probably what Styles Hutchins thought when the Georgia-born African-American came to Kewanee in the early 1900s. Factories were booming here and the population was growing by the day.

But it's doubtful that anyone here knew of the old black barber's groundbreaking and controversial past as he clipped their sideburns at the shop he ran in his home.

Kathy Lauder, a research specialist with the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville, has been piecing together Hutchins' extraordinary life and keeping us updated over the past three years or so. Recently we received the latest version of the simple barber's life before Kewanee, which included serving with a Nashville infantry regiment near the end of the Civil War — when he was only 12.

Hutchins' father, Dougherty, was one of the few free Southern blacks who operated private businesses under slavery — in this case, a barbershop in Atlanta. Several years after the war, Styles, at 17, and his older brother, Alvin, worked in their father's shop, but the younger Hutchins had his sights set higher.

He attended Atlanta University, becoming one of the first black graduates, and taught school for a short time. He then earned a law degree from the University of South Carolina and not only became the first African-American attorney admitted to the Georgia bar, but the first to plead a case before a judge in that state.

Moving across the state line to Chattanooga, Tenn., he got into trouble and politics, often at the same time. In newspapers of the time, Lauder has found Hutchins spent two years in prison for the alleged "habit of mixing his clients' money with his own," and narrowly escaped a murder charge when he shot a man who had stabbed him in the leg, leaving a life-long limp.

Hutchins had a successful law practice in Chattanooga and in 1886 became one of the first African-Amercans elected to the Tennesssee legislature at age 35. The names of Hutchins and 13 other blacks elected during Reconstruction are listed on a granite plaque installed two years ago in the main hall of the Tennessee State Capitol.

In the latest revision of Hutchins' biography from Lauder we also learned his portrait hangs in a hallway of the Georgia Supreme Court as one of the state's earliest black lawyers.

Our Kewanee barber's place in history, however, came about as the result of the conviction of a black man named Ed Johnson in 1906 for the rape of a 21-year-old white woman named Nevada Taylor. Taylor was on her way home from a bookkeeping job in downtown Chattanooga when, she claimed, she was raped in the St. Elmo Cemetery by a black man "with a soft, kind voice."

Sheriff Joseph Shipp rounded up two black men, including Johnson, who had witnesses to support his claim he was in the Last Chance Saloon at the time of the rape. Taylor, however, picked Johnson out of a two-man speaking lineup as having the same "soft, kind voice." He was found guilty and sentenced to hang March 13.

Page 2 of 3 - Through the persuasion of Hutchins and others, Chattanooga's most respected black attorney, Noah Parden, agreed to take Johnson's case on appeal. At first reluctant for fear of the backlash on his law practice, Parden soon changed his mind when he reviewed the case and concluded Johnson was innocent.

The appeals process took Parden and Hutchins all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the first in a series of unprecedented events, the justices eventually granted the appeal and stayed Johnson's execution. That night, back in Chattanooga, a mob broke into the jail, dragged Johnson to a bridge and hanged him over the side with a rope. When they pulled him back up, Johnson was reportedly still breathing. He was then shot several times, ending his life.

Angered by what had happened, Parden and Hutchins marched back to the Supreme Court and convinced the justices, for the first and last time in the court’s history, to swear out a warrant for the arrest of Sheriff Shipp and others in authority who stood by and did nothing while Johnson was lynched. All were sentenced to short prison terms and soon back in Chattanooga where they were welcomed as heroes. Parden and Hutchins were run out of town in fear for the safety of themselves and their families.

So how did this guy wind up in Kewanee, Ill.?

One version has both lawyers heading for Oklahoma, but Hutchins turns up in the 1910 census in Peoria, Ill., listed as a lawyer. Sheriff Shipp was released in January of 1910 after serving a 90-day sentence. It's likely Parden and Hutchins had left Chattanooga by then.

Why Peoria? Anyone's guess. It was in a northern state and people usually pick a town for one of two reasons — they know someone there or have heard something about it.

By the 1920 census, Hutchins, his wife Mattie, and son Styles, Jr., and his wife, Ethel, were listed at 519 N. Grace Ave. in Kewanee. They are also listed at that address in the 1919-20 city directory. Hutchins and his son were listed as barbers and Mattie and Ethel both worked at the Parkside Hotel. Kewanee city directories for the early 1900s are hard to find, but in the 1917 book, Hutchins and family are listed as living and cutting hair at 108 W. Fifth St.

Just when between 1910 and 1917 Hutchins moved to Kewanee, and why, are not known. One reason might be that in those years Kewanee was an industrial boom town with factories full of thousands of laborers. Hutchins may have heard and, deciding to give up law because of the Ed Johnson case, went back to what he learned in his father's Atlanta barbershop and made a living in his later years cutting hair and shaving faces.

His West Fifth Street address is now a vacant lot behind Jo Jo's Convenient Store. The house on North Grace, however, is still standing, tucked away at the back of Cernovich's scrap yard. In 1920 it would have been a few doors north of the east gate of the bustling Walworth factory and a perfect spot to catch men on the way home in need of a shave and haircut.

Page 3 of 3 - The next available city directory, 1922, lists 519 N. Grace as vacant. Hutchins turns up in the 1930 census in Mattoon, Ill., still cutting hair.

He died in 1950, just short of his 98th birthday. He, his wife, son and the son's second wife are all buried in Mattoon's Dodge Grove Cemetery. The Henry County Genealogical Society's Steve Morrison, who has relatives in Mattoon, has helped us track down the locations of the graves. A daughter, Viola, lived in Indianapolis.

So far, we have not found a reason why Hutchins moved from Kewanee to Mattoon.

A portrait of Styles Hutchins now hangs in the hallway at the Georgia Supreme Court, in Atlanta as one of the state's first black attorneys, and in Chattanooga, attorneys belong to the Styles L. Hutchibs Bar Association.

Honors no one in Kewanee probably ever knew about as he wielded scissors, comb and razor in the little house on North Grace Avenue.